Americans in particular are myopic. They’re not traveling as much. When you were a college student, the next thing you would do on graduation was to take a year off and travel. That’s what I did. I went to Indonesia.

Taymor contrasts an earlier, more outward-looking rite of passage—taking time after college to travel—with what she sees as a narrowing of perspective among contemporary Americans. By calling Americans “myopic,” she suggests that limited exposure to other cultures can shrink imagination, empathy, and artistic risk-taking. Her personal example—traveling to Indonesia—functions as evidence that immersion abroad can be formative, expanding one’s sense of aesthetics, ritual, and storytelling beyond U.S. norms. In the context of Taymor’s career, the remark aligns with her reputation for drawing on global performance traditions and visual languages; travel is framed not as leisure but as an education that counters parochialism.